Here are some highlights from Jacqui Honeywood's CYA Conference session on Social Media and Blogging: Her blogs are http://b-brand.blogspot.com.au/ and http://crapmamma.com/ and she can be found on Twitter at @BBRANDjac and @CRAPMamma . Jacqui compared for us the conversion-to-sales power of the 'I've put so much work into this book, it's fantastic, buy it!' approach to the 'this is the situation in my life that I was struggling with that caused me to write this book to help my son' approach. The back story to the book sells far more copies, and the beauty of social media is that it gives us the ability to share the background to our stories and why you wrote them. Your first aim is to grow your online readers. Your second aim is to sell your product. Successful social media use includes blogging, and requires work on both strategy (technical) and community (speaking to people online). Technical things are like defining your audience, setting objectives and doing search engine optimization (SEO). Community things are like engaging, responding, commenting, sharing and connecting.Why blog? To connect with your audience To maintain an ongoing connection To keep relevant To have an online presence To promote a brand To give credibility to your work To personalise your stuff, your product To engage a sense of loyalty It is very important to respond to comments and to comment on other blogs.What will you blog about? The community that you want to tap into probably already exists. Instead, think about how you can help that community do what it wants to do. Remember, blogging is not about you, it is about them. Your content has to be of value to your audience. Does it motivate? Does it educate? Does it inspire? Is it authentic? Is it helpful? Does it provide solutions? Does it elicit emotion? (If it does, it will provoke more likes and shares) As long as you are doing that with most of your content, you can filter in some of your promotional stuff. At the end of your blog post you need a call to action. Before you hit 'publish', take a moment to consider whether this blog post will work towards your strategy and community objectives. If the answer is 'Yes' hit that button, if 'No' then some re-writing and re-thinking is required first.

If you would like a copy of the more detailed Conference Notes that are being sent out to CBHunCC members via email, send through your name and email address through the Contact page.

This year there were 3 success stories.Jennifer Loakes, the author of a picture book with a very topical story about making friends with someone who comes from a completely different culture and who has been wounded by trauma.Helene Magisson, an illustrator who really did her industry homework, saw a niche in the market for illustrating classic children's stories, prepared her portfolio accordingly and now has a published picture book and at least 2 more in the pipeline. Her online portfolio at Illustrators Australia sells her abilities (better than her website does), and is a portfolio worth studying.Georgie Donaghey, the author of a picture book, founder of Creative Kids Tales , the momentum behind the radio show 'The Author's Shelf', and the official CYA Conference Tweeter. Why did their publishers think their work would sell? It is a commercial decision, and if a publisher can't see a sizable market for the proposed book then there won't be a contract.

For Jennifer's 'Mate and Me' there is an obvious market in primary schools looking for resources to help children think through asylum seeker issues, and the skills needed to welcome any new student who comes to the classroom from a different culture. For Helene her consistent style, technical quality, compositional ability and lyrical approach were what a publisher was looking for in an illustrator for new editions of 'stood the test of time' children's stories. Classics like 'The Velveteen Rabbit' will always sell, but they will sell magnificently well if the illustrations are just right. For Georgie her social media reach is so extensive and her personal connections so friendly and helpful that just about any book with her name on it would sell due to our innate human curiosity to find out more about what makes her tick. Having a beautiful cover for 'Lulu' is icing on the cake. It doesn't take much of a crystal ball to predict that Georgie's book will have the best first year sales figures. Jennifer and Helene's online presences are less than 2 years old. Georgie has 4 years of consistent online presence under her belt, big numbers of media and publishing connections and well over ten times the number of social media connections than the other two. What can we learn from them?

Perfect your craft be it writing or illustrating. Do your industry research. Start working consistently on your online presences now. An hour or two set aside for social media once a week will pay big dividends when it is your turn to launch a book.

For my conference notes on their journey to publication speeches and an analysis of the effectiveness of their online sites, together with the rest of my conference notes as they progressively get typed up, send me an email address through the Contact page.

When something doesn't work like you anticipated, then all you have left is lessons learned the hard way. So it has been with the inaugural Free Plug Friday.

The idea came from Brandan Vogt's Shameless Monday http://brandonvogt.com/shameless-monday/ which appeared to work very well. After all if you are looking for a free place to plug your creative work together with the opportunity to try out a different sales pitch-who wouldn't jump at the opportunity, right? Any online breadcrumb that leads people to your work is something to get excited about, right?

Wrong.

Given that no one took advantage of CBHunCC's Free Plug Friday, possible reasons are:

• It was school holiday time and plenty of people are with children and grandchildren.

• Maybe those people who say you have to carefully choose what time of day to tweet actually know what they are talking about.

• It is never easy sitting down to write a self-promotional piece. In fact it is surprisingly difficult to even get 100 words together let alone 200.

• The comments when posted don't automatically show on the blog-page (you have to click through). That makes them virtually invisible. The comment section's unsophisticated 'plain text only' input didn't help either. One way around that for next time is to still get the raw information in via comment, and then to put that information into a blog-post eg FPF Sandra Moncrief illustrator. Plain text URLs for images in the comments could then become visible images in the blog-posts.

• The bitly link didn't get clicked through at all, although profile views were up significantly. This means people exercise caution first and say 'Who is this?' before looking at what they have to say. Such unforseen behaviour meant that anyone who did look at the profile (and didn't click through to the blog) may have incorrectly concluded that only locals need apply. One way around that is to have a line on the home page about Free Plug Fridays being for any children's book writer and illustrator where ever they happen to live.

• Just because you use a hashtag, it doesn't mean it will show up in the hashtag feed. Yep. Posted two with #kidlit and looked during the day to see that it didn't show. Maybe it got 'drowned' because the hashtag was so busy. That was disappointing, but sometimes technology doesn't deliver as expected. #freeplugfriday showed up but the culture of that hashtag was more self-promotion than opportunities for self-promotion. Next time having one tweet for #kidlitart and one tweet for #kidlitauthor would be more targeted.

• Having an image takes up a big chunk of 140 characters to play with on Twitter.

• It takes time for a Twitter reputation to be built up, and for people to decide to follow your Twitter handle. How successful a promotion is greatly depends on the number of followers you have and the proportion of them who are interested in your topic. There are no short cuts to this step. Wait for the reputation to build before trying again.

• Social proof is crucially important. One of the recommendations from those using crowdfunding is that you lock in 25% of your donors before you even launch your crowdfunding project. People are more likely to give if they can see a good number of other people thought it was worthwhile to give to. Likewise, no one wants to be the first to add a comment, but if they can see 4-5 comments already posted they will a) have a good idea about how to write their own and b) will be happy to have a go themselves. So make sure you have some people lined up to comment as soon as the blog-post goes live. Giving people advanced warning isn't enough, you actually need commitments to comment.

• Even giving LinkedIn and Facebook a go to get the word out didn't work. That was truly surprising because the LinkedIn groups for people associated with children's books seems top heavy with people seeking to promote their work. But then a big ocean of potential contacts will always appeal more than a small pond.

What now?

Free Plug Fridays are still a good idea.

Because every #kidlit author and illustrator needs more breadcrumbs online.

And because this small pond is going to grow.

So if you came in late, or missed out, if anyone wants a FPF blog-post with their name on it, between now and the end of April 2015 send the raw material in a comment, and CBHunCC will make it look good (especially if you send some relevant image URLs).

Earlier this week, the Children's Book Writers and Illustrators of the Hunter and Central Coast signed up for a Twitter account. Our Twitter handle is @CBHunCC.

The purpose of entering the Twitter-verse is to find the best online content to help our writers and illustrators develop their creative careers, and then to share it with them (through the Monday Gleanings newsletter) and with you (if you Follow us). From all the good stuff we find, the best web-link of the week will be shared on our blog page.

We will be looking to follow those on Twitter who are regularly posting helpful content; blog-posts, PDFs, infographics, tutorials, interviews, success stories etc.